Helen Burgess

This generative poem is dedicated to the gourmand in all of us. Though perhaps it’s more interested in exorcising it through health awareness. The poem itself is a remix of “Taroko Gorge” based on eating deliciously fatty and unhealthy foods, such as the Gougère from the title, but Burgess adds two other factors: one is an LDL cholesterol counter that counts up to 160 and provides advice on seeking medical attention, and another is a marquee strip that scrolls information on high levels of triglycerides and cholesterol levels. The masterstroke in this variation is the use of the “path” function in the code, which instead of revealing a monkey or Captain Kirk, it produces the phrase “myocardial infarction.”

It would be particularly visceral if this variation would stop after executing this function, but modern medicine has allowed many people to survive a heart attack. And so the gorging on deliciously fatty foods continues, for as long as a body can bear it.